Business in the Feminine
Female workers, sports champions, writers, journalists, designers. And many more. The history of Pirelli is closely intertwined with a whole feminine world to be read, interpreted, and imagined. Company registers, features, personnel files, photographs, articles: the archive tells the story of a company that is also a story of women. Rosa Navoni was the first woman to be taken on at Pirelli, in the factory in Via Ponte Seveso in Milan. In 1873, aged just 15, she became a worker in the “playground balls” department. Her name appears in the company register, and her face appears in the volume that celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Group in 1922. There is also a First Lady in the typically male-dominated world of motor racing: Maria Teresa de Filippis, a countess born in Naples in 1926, became a champion racing driver. In a photo in our archive, we see her preparing for the 1949 Stella Alpina race in a Taraschi Urania Sport, powered by BMW and fitted with Pirelli Stella Bianca tyres. Women and words: the writers whose contributions appeared in Pirelli magazine between the 1950s and the 1970s, included Fernanda Pivano, who in 1953 helped many readers discover the world of American literature, from Francis Scott Fitzgerald to John Steinbeck. Gianna Manzini, who explicitly describes “Donne al mare“ – women by the sea “who feel their power in an absolute manner, who are free, and heedless of their daily fights, as well as of their daily victories”. Then there is Camilla Cederna, who invented puns for “Un viaggio ma“ – “A journey but…” to be driven on Cinturato tyres, and Lietta Tornabuoni, who interviewed Pasolini at his home in Rome: “Even if he hadn’t be driven by curiosity, and by the joy of playing and showing off, he could still have been an actor: playing the part of a poet or possibly a symbolic apparition (Destiny, Death, or something like that) in a French film of 1937.”
During those same years, internationally renowned designers such as Lora Lamm, Jeanne Michot Grignani, Christiane Beylier and Christa Tschopp all helped create a graphic style like no other in the history of visual communication. They created advertising campaigns for trend-setting raincoats, drawing women riding bicycles, Vespa scooters and Lambrettas with Pirelli tyres, and they reinvented the logo by experimenting with new shapes for the Long P. A logo that, for a century and a half, has brought together stories of work and talent, resourcefulness and creativity. Stories in the feminine, too.
Female workers, sports champions, writers, journalists, designers. And many more. The history of Pirelli is closely intertwined with a whole feminine world to be read, interpreted, and imagined. Company registers, features, personnel files, photographs, articles: the archive tells the story of a company that is also a story of women. Rosa Navoni was the first woman to be taken on at Pirelli, in the factory in Via Ponte Seveso in Milan. In 1873, aged just 15, she became a worker in the “playground balls” department. Her name appears in the company register, and her face appears in the volume that celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Group in 1922. There is also a First Lady in the typically male-dominated world of motor racing: Maria Teresa de Filippis, a countess born in Naples in 1926, became a champion racing driver. In a photo in our archive, we see her preparing for the 1949 Stella Alpina race in a Taraschi Urania Sport, powered by BMW and fitted with Pirelli Stella Bianca tyres. Women and words: the writers whose contributions appeared in Pirelli magazine between the 1950s and the 1970s, included Fernanda Pivano, who in 1953 helped many readers discover the world of American literature, from Francis Scott Fitzgerald to John Steinbeck. Gianna Manzini, who explicitly describes “Donne al mare“ – women by the sea “who feel their power in an absolute manner, who are free, and heedless of their daily fights, as well as of their daily victories”. Then there is Camilla Cederna, who invented puns for “Un viaggio ma“ – “A journey but…” to be driven on Cinturato tyres, and Lietta Tornabuoni, who interviewed Pasolini at his home in Rome: “Even if he hadn’t be driven by curiosity, and by the joy of playing and showing off, he could still have been an actor: playing the part of a poet or possibly a symbolic apparition (Destiny, Death, or something like that) in a French film of 1937.”
During those same years, internationally renowned designers such as Lora Lamm, Jeanne Michot Grignani, Christiane Beylier and Christa Tschopp all helped create a graphic style like no other in the history of visual communication. They created advertising campaigns for trend-setting raincoats, drawing women riding bicycles, Vespa scooters and Lambrettas with Pirelli tyres, and they reinvented the logo by experimenting with new shapes for the Long P. A logo that, for a century and a half, has brought together stories of work and talent, resourcefulness and creativity. Stories in the feminine, too.
